Sunday pancakes

Sunday is always pancakes day. We don't rush out of bed, so it's usually at least 8am by the time I'm digging the blender out of the cupboard. The coffee maker goes on and bubbles away to Aled Jones on Radio Two's Good Morning Sunday while I make the batter. Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs generally accompanies the actual cooking part. It all makes for a mellow, relaxed Sunday morning, before I charge off on a long run. Today it's an eight miler, so I feel quite at liberty to smother at least four of these pancakes in maple syrup or Nutella.

These are based on Nigella Lawson's banana buttermilk pancakes from 'Feast', but as ever I have tweaked things to suit the way I like to cook them.

RECIPE: Banananilla Sunday Pancakes

Place the following into a blender and whiz:

Two (or three) VERY ripe bananas, the sort that are so black they're falling out of their skins in a banana-type strip tease. Less ripe ones work too, but are less bananary. Green ones are foul. Just don't.

1 egg. Or two, if you've got hens and they're showing off. I have been known to add up to four eggs to this.

250 ml plain yoghurt. (The original recipe specifies buttermilk, if you've got a pot of that, use it. I've always got yoghurt and rarely got buttermilk. If you've got neither use milk, perhaps a little less to begin with, you can always add more. Acidify the milk with a little lemon juice - the acid reacts with the raising agents and makes the pancakes fluffy.)

150g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

(Last Sunday I forgot to add the baking powder and the bicarb. The pancakes were still edible, but they tasted slightly sour - no alkaline agents for the acids in the yoghurt to react with and make carbon dioxide bubble to make the pancakes fluffy. Not just a recipe - a science lesson too!)

30g (about a tablespoonful - life's too short to measure this!) melted butter.

A good slug of vanilla extract.

Whiz together until nicely blended, then dollop spoonfuls (about one and a half tablespoonfuls per pancake) onto a hot griddle. Wait until bubbles appear...

...then flip over to cook the other side.

Pile onto a plate and serve.

Serve with maple syrup, golden syrup, Nutella, strawberry jam, peanut butter, chocolate sauce, toffee sauce, honey, etc!

Variations.

Add: More bananas, less bananas, very ripe pear, tablespoonful of peanut butter, blueberries (drop onto the surface of the pancakes before flipping), wholemeal flour, handful of porridge oats, chopped plain chocolate (choconananilla pancakes), the sky's the limit, play!

Throughly yummy sandwich for a Tuesday

I had this sandwich for lunch today. It was one of those lunches forced on me by happenstance. Hannah, you see, in reaching for carrot peelings to feed to the Guinea Pigs, had knocked over the eggs and one cracked.

"Mummy you're going to be cross," she said, leaving the kitchen at a sprint.

Lunch, therefore, began with one slightly cracked egg from our lovely bantam who came into lay, quite festively, on Christmas Day and has honoured us with a daily egg ever since.

I poached said egg and its brother from the day before in a small pan of boiling water. Being so tiny and so fresh, they're a joy to poach, setting to a pleasing oval shaped white with a shocking jaffa orange yolk.

I had a handful of spinach, so I washed it and wilted it in a pan. Meanwhile I toasted two thin slices of white bread and lightly buttered it.

Sandwich assembly time. Place the bottom slice of toast on a plate. Top with spinach and a grind of black pepper, then a dollop - small one, it's January - of Hellman's mayonnaise. Top with the eggs and then the final slice of toast.

Apply, as Nigella would say, to face. If you can eat this without getting egg on your chin, then you're a better woman (or man) than I. Either that or you cooked your eggs for longer. Any which way, it was delicious.